Tri Crossfire Worth The Hassle?

[BodgeITandRun]

I have never tried more than two cards together before, but am hoping to come into some money soon and am toying with the idea of 3 7970's or one 7990(when released) and a 7970. Is running 3 cards a lot more problematic than 2 ?

For the record, I don't need 3 cards. I Just want them.

Has anybody had any experience with this setup and can you report the difficulty in getting two up and running vs three.

Cheers

 

[Shadz]

I have an Sli setup and the hardest part about getting it up and running was taking the
side panel off my case lol.

Easy as chips to do slot the card in put the bridge connector to both the cards plug
power in and your done, a side from doing driver updates when you re-boot that is.

Only difference with tri Sli is that you connect 2 bridge connectors and not one.

Just be aware that if you have 3 cards then you will need a bigger PSU depending on
what you have now as your sig does not say what you have.

 

[BodgeITandRun]

I have an Sli setup and the hardest part about getting it up and running was taking the
side panel off my case lol.

Easy as chips to do slot the card in put the bridge connector to both the cards plug
power in and your done, a side from doing driver updates when you re-boot that is.

Only difference with tri Sli is that you connect 2 bridge connectors and not one.

Just be aware that if you have 3 cards then you will need a bigger PSU depending on
what you have now as your sig does not say what you have.

Oh ****, good point. I only have a 875w PSU. Hmm, well that already adds to the expense. I had 6950's in crossfire and that was easy. I just wondered if three would be as easy to setup.

 

[Tonester0011]

^ as he says, just as easy as two.

I was going to go your route as well, 7990+7970 trifire. Because i want, rather than need lol.

Edit: 875w should be enough considering the 7990 is rated for 300w or so the rumour mill is concerned.

 

[BodgeITandRun]

^ as he says, just as easy as two.

I was going to go your route as well, 7990+7970 trifire. Because i want, rather than need lol.

Edit: 875w should be enough considering the 7990 is rated for 300w or so the rumour mill is concerned.

Well I would be more interested if I could get away without changing PSU. It's a Thermaltake Toughpower, which are half decent too.

 

[Tonester0011]

Well I would be more interested if I could get away without changing PSU. It's a Thermaltake Toughpower, which are half decent too.

Same as mine. Doubt you'd need to change, what they take from the wall and what they say on the box are two different things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=7epu4oEQVR4

Should give you an idea how much a rig really needs.

 

[BodgeITandRun]

Same as mine. Doubt you'd need to change, what they take from the wall and what they say on the box are two different things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=7epu4oEQVR4

Should give you an idea how much a rig really needs.

Thanks for the link. A very informative one too. Well if I can get enough cash together I might risk it then.

 

[bhavv]

That PSU should be fine, and its about as much hassle installing crossfire / SLI as it is installing more ram, that is that there is no hassle at all.

Plug in second card, plug in the adaptor to connect them, boot up, install drivers and done.

Just don't ever try beta drivers for a multi GPU setup and you will be fine.

 

[Clav]

As others have said setting up tri-fire is pretty easy. The 3 things you need to check out first are the power requirements (as mentioned); your case cooling and slot placements; your motherboard's PCIe lanes, can it handle tri-fire? how many lanes will it give to 3 cards?

 

[BodgeITandRun]

As others have said setting up tri-fire is pretty easy. The 3 things you need to check out first are the power requirements (as mentioned); your case cooling and slot placements; your motherboard's PCIe lanes, can it handle tri-fire? how many lanes will it give to 3 cards?

My case cooling is pretty good, a fair amount of airflow going around. I have the gigabyte x58-OC board which has a lot better PCIE spacing than my old UD5 board had, so running two cards at least gives me loads of space between them.

I was only considering using two slots, as using 3 might be a squeeze. That is why 7990 and a 7970 was my idea for tri-fire, rather than three 7970's.